Edgar Allan Poe’s legacy haunts and compels people all over the world. His greatest impact is felt in the cities where he once lived, which include New York City, Richmond, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. Poe was inspired by the culture, architecture, and crime of Philadelphia where he gave birth to the detective genre with “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and delved into the human psyche with “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat.” Poe published 28 other stories and edited Graham’s Magazine and Burton’sGentleman’s Magazine while living in Philadelphia.

10. The Poe Mural

The Poe Mural painted on a neighboring house across the street from the Poe House.

Historical sites in Philadelphia are often accompanied by art in the form of murals. An Edgar Allan Poe mural is painted on a house across the street from the Poe House to honor the man who once lived in the neighborhood.

The mural features an oval portrait of Poe and the passage, “I never knew anyone so keenly alive to a joke as the king was. He seemed to live only for joking. To tell a good story of the joke kind, and to tell it well, was the surest way to his favor.” The excerpt is from Poe’s short story, “Hop-Frog,” which was originally published as “Hop-Frog; Or, the Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs.”